Spanish scientists Jose Antonio Lorente Acosta of the Granada University is conducting a genetic test to see whether Columbus was not a Genoan merchant, but a Catalan pirate instead!

While historians have mostly reckoned Columbus was an Italian born in 1451 in Genoa, a persuasive counter-lobby argues that the mariner who pioneered the Spanish conquista was in reality the Catalan Cristofol Colom, who airbrushed his past to conceal activities as a pirate and conspirator against the king.